She slung her handbag back over her shoulder, turned around, and looked at Jiang Muyun seriously.
“If you don’t like this accessory, then I don’t want it.”
After discarding the accessory, Su Qinghan turned around.
“Mu Yun.”
Jiang Muyun’s cries gradually softened, from hysterical wailing to quiet sobbing, and then from sobbing to the occasional sniffle.
“Mu Yun, stop crying.”
She wiped her tears haphazardly with the back of her hand. Most of her makeup was smudged, with mascara forming two dark gray streaks under her eyes, making her look utterly disheveled.
“Qinghan…” Her voice was hoarse, carrying that peculiar fragility that comes after crying. “Tell me, you’re not lying to me. You won’t fall for anyone other than me, right?”
Su Qinghan was silent for a second.
“Mm.”
Even though she wasn’t used to lying, she calmly gave Jiang Muyun the answer she wanted.
“I’ll only give you this one chance.” Jiang Muyun sniffled, her voice carrying a petulant, childlike stubbornness. “Next time, if there’s a next time, I won’t forgive you.”
Su Qinghan nodded.
“Also,” Jiang Muyun looked down, picking at the edge of her skirt with her fingers, her voice muffled, “you said just now that you’d give me anything I want, right?”
“…Right, money isn’t an issue.” She paused. “I just don’t want to make you sad.”
When she said those words, Su Qinghan herself found them somewhat bitter.
It was true.
But the flip side of that sentence was that Su Qinghan herself was the one feeling sad.
‘I don’t want to make you sad.’
What was she sad about?
She couldn’t say.
Maybe it was because she had to throw away that keychain. Maybe it was because she had to use money again to mend the rift between her and Jiang Muyun.
Maybe it was because she suddenly realized that there was nothing left between her and Jiang Muyun except money and a debt of gratitude.
For a moment, Su Qinghan even wondered if she truly liked Jiang Muyun.
Did she like the person in front of her, or the blurry shadow in her memories?
Jiang Muyun didn’t notice Su Qinghan’s emotional turmoil. She finally stopped crying and broke into a smile.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand again and said in a thick voice, “Then it’s settled. After graduation, we’ll get together.”
Su Qinghan tugged at the corner of her mouth, offering what was supposed to be a smile.
“Okay.”
But deep down, she knew the smile didn’t reach her eyes.
Once upon a time, Su Qinghan had also wondered how much of Jiang Muyun’s affection was genuine.
Was she with her because she genuinely liked her, or because she was the eldest miss of the Su family, because she had money, because she could buy Jiang Muyun everything she wanted?
But whenever that thought surfaced, Su Qinghan would remember what happened in her childhood.
If it weren’t for Jiang Muyun, she might not be alive today.
So even if Jiang Muyun had flaws, even if she had shortcomings, even if she never hesitated to spend Su Qinghan’s money, she shouldn’t betray that debt of gratitude, right?
Thinking this way, Su Qinghan forcefully suppressed the faint doubt in her heart.
She stood there for a moment, watched Jiang Muyun return to the villa, and then turned and left.
The streetlight behind her cast her shadow on the ground in front of her.
The wind blew from afar, lifting the hem of her trench coat before letting it fall again.
She looked up at the second-floor window of the villa.
Jiang Muyun had already gone inside. The curtain was drawn, and a warm yellow light leaked through the gaps, quiet and still.
After confirming no one was watching her anymore, Su Qinghan took a step forward.
Then another step.
She walked to the patch of grass, crouched down.
The branches of the shrubs swayed gently in the night breeze, a thin layer of dust covering the dark green leaves.
She reached out, parted the leaves, and searched through the grass under the dim light of the streetlamp.
She remembered where she threw it.
It should be near the root of this bush, beside the rock on the left.
The keychain wasn’t big. It was milky white, which should have made it stand out in the green grass.
But she couldn’t find it.
She parted the leaves on the left, then the leaves on the right, her fingers groping the ground, her fingertips stained with dirt and debris.
Nothing.
‘How could it be gone?’
She clearly remembered throwing it in this spot. It had only been a few minutes. It couldn’t have been picked up by someone else, and it couldn’t have vanished into thin air.
But that small, milky-white seashell keychain with the light blue gem set into it seemed to have evaporated, utterly impossible to find.
Su Qinghan knelt on the grass, bending over, almost pressing her face to the ground.
Her hands groped back and forth through the grass, parting clump after clump of leaves, turning over pebble after pebble.
The night wind blew, messing up her hair and chilling her heart.
There was nothing.
She finally stopped moving, crouched there, her hands hanging by her sides, her fingertips stained with mud and plant sap.
It felt like a piece of Su Qinghan’s heart was missing.
Not the kind of empty that comes from intense pain, but the kind like something was being slowly pulled away.
She couldn’t quite describe the emotion.
It wasn’t sadness, not anger, not regret—it was a mixture of all four, and yet none of them.
Like a cocktail made from every flavor, none standing out, but when mixed together, it became difficult to swallow.
She had lost something Yan Yu gave her again.
Last time, it was that genuine sincerity.
This time, it was this keychain.
She stood up, brushed the dirt and grass clippings off her skirt, took a deep breath, and turned to walk back to the car parked by the roadside.
She opened the car door, sat in the driver’s seat, buckled her seatbelt, and started the engine.
The engine rumbled lowly, the headlights came on, illuminating the dark asphalt road ahead.
Su Qinghan gripped the steering wheel, her gaze falling on the handbag in the passenger seat.
Dark brown pebbled-grain calfskin. The metal fastenings gleamed with an understated luster under the dashboard lights.
The bag was still the same bag, expensive and exquisite, the envy of others.
But it looked different.
It was missing that little keychain.
That worthless little thing, that cheap little trinket. It was only an eighty-yuan item. Losing it shouldn’t be worth a second thought.
But Su Qinghan felt terrible.
It wasn’t the pain of losing money, but the feeling of missing something that shouldn’t be missing, an unnecessary void where a thing ought to be.
She stepped on the gas, and the car slowly pulled out of the villa district’s driveway, merging into the city’s nighttime traffic.
The neon lights outside the window receded one by one—red, green, blue, yellow—their light flickering across her face before disappearing.
The car stereo was off. The only sounds in the cabin were the low hum of the engine and the rustle of tires on the road.
She drove for a while. Suddenly, her phone rang.
Brrrring brrrring brrrring—
The ringtone was jarringly loud in the enclosed cabin.
Su Qinghan didn’t answer.
She was driving. She never had the habit of answering the phone while driving; it wasn’t safe.
The phone was on the passenger seat. The screen was lit, buzzing and vibrating, bouncing next to the handbag.
The ringing stopped.
A few seconds later, it rang again.
It stopped and rang again.
Once, twice, three times, four times.
Like a tireless alarm clock, stubbornly, relentlessly ringing.
Su Qinghan’s brow furrowed more and more.
Her gaze darted between the road ahead and the constantly flashing phone screen on the passenger seat. Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel, then relaxed.
‘Who could it be?’
The car passed an intersection. She found a spot by the roadside where she could park temporarily, turned on the turn signal, pulled over, and turned off the engine.
She picked up the phone and checked the caller ID.
Two words were displayed on the screen:
“Father.”
Su Qinghan took a deep breath, pressed the answer button, and put the phone to her ear.
The voice that came through was as cold as an iron railing in winter.
It wasn’t a roar or a shout, but a deep, suppressed, angry inquiry.
“Su Qinghan, tell me. Do you know how serious the blunder is with that ‘Riverside New City’ project I gave you last time?”
Su Qinghan’s heart sank.
She knew about that project.
The real estate development in Riverside New City was one of the most important projects for the Su Group this year, with a total investment exceeding one billion yuan.
Her father had given her the project to manage, intending for her to gain some experience and practical skills before officially taking over the family business.
After she took over, most of the work was delegated to her team, while she made the key decisions and signed off on things.
The early stages of the project went smoothly. Land approvals, planning and design, construction bidding—each step proceeded according to plan.
But during a recent critical negotiation, the third-party intermediary she commissioned made a major mistake.
A crucial contract document wasn’t thoroughly reviewed before signing. A clause extremely unfavorable to the Su Group was hidden in it, and the other party capitalized on it, forcing the Su Group to concede nearly 15 percent of the profit margin in the subsequent cooperation.
Fifteen percent.
It didn’t sound like much, but for a billion-yuan-level project, it meant a loss of 150 million yuan.
Her father’s voice came through the earpiece, carrying a disappointment she had never heard before.
“Qinghan, do you know what this means? It means you failed to perform even the most basic risk control. You handed the project to others to do, and you signed off without verifying every single item in the contract.”
“I’ve been fighting in the business world for thirty years! I’ve never suffered such a covert loss!”
Su Qinghan’s fingers holding the phone were trembling slightly.
“I did check the contract, I just… had a momentary lapse, I didn’t expect the other party to do that…”
“You didn’t expect it?” Her father cut her off, his voice finally rising. “You are the daughter of the Su family, the heir to the Su Group! Do you think it’s ridiculous for ‘I didn’t expect it’ to come out of your mouth?”
“The business world is a battlefield! Don’t act like a victim!”
“But I was just set up…”
There was two seconds of silence on the other end, as if someone was trying to calm their emotions.
Then her father’s voice came again, colder and calmer than before.
“Fine… Su Qinghan, starting today, you won’t get a single cent from the family!”